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THE REVELATION 
OF S. JOHN 



A LECTURE INTRODUCTORY 
TO THE STUDY OF THE BOOK 

WITH 

AN ANALYSIS OF THE B O 6 K 



AND 



SOME ACCOUNT OF ITS NUMBER SYMBOLS 



BY 



LUCIUS WATERMAN, D. D. 



HANOVER, N. H. 

1915 



THE REVELATION 
OF S. JOHN 



A LECTURE INTRODUCTORY 
TO THE STUDY OF THE BOOK 



WITH 



AN ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK 



AND 

SOME ACCOUNT OF 
ITS NUMBER SYMBOLS 



BY 



LUCIUS WATERMAN, D. D. 



HANOVER, N. H. 



c V<*vSa 



3* 



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FOREWORD 

The history of this Lecture will explain how the author 
of these pages was persuaded to overcome an almost 
insuperable diffidence and finally permit them to be 
printed. 

Twenty-five years ago a course of Instructions upon 
the Book of Revelation was given at All Saints' Church, 
Littleton, New Hampshire. A young newspaper re- 
porter drove himself (from a rather stern sense of duty) 
to attend the first of the series. After that first venture, 
although attendance at subsequent instructions was 
only possible by a peculiar sacrifice, not one in the series 
was missed. 

For years the fascinated auditor has begged that the 
course be expanded into a series of Lectures and printed 
for general use. When himself rector of a parish, he 
secured Dr. Waterman for his people, and this Introduc- 
tory Lecture (which already had been given at S. Paul's 
Church, Concord, New Hampshire) was delivered. 
When to the reiterated petition of the former years there 
was added the request of one hundred of the parish, the 
weight of desire was sufficient to induce the lecturer to 
consent to publication. 

This introduction to the Book of Revelation will be a 
disappointment to many — because it is only an Intro- 
duction. Financial reasons do not permit a request that 
Dr. Waterman complete the studies thus introduced, 
but the price of this pamphlet is placed at a low figure 
in the hope that many will show a desire to have the 
Book of Revelation commented upon by such a scholar 



and careful student as is Dr. Waterman. If the reader 
of these lines will do all he can to extend the reading and 
sale of this Introductory Lecture, a more extended series 
may be asked for. 

One of the dreams of youth is beginning to be realized 
by this publication. My earnest prayer is, that it may 
soon be realized fully. 



Brian C. Roberts, 
S. Mark's Church, Augusta, Maine. 



Easter Monday, 1915. 



Copies of this pamphlet may be obtained from 

Rev. Brian C. Roberts, 

Westboro, Mass. 



or from 



Rev. Henri B. B. Le Ferre, 

Augusta, Me. 

price 15 cents, postpaid. 



LECTURE 

The Bible is meant to supply every part of a man's 
spiritual nature with something to feed upon. There are 
books that supply the intellect, books that supply the 
feelings, books that move the will, — here is a book that 
supplies the imagination. God does not expect us to 
understand it all. It is not addressed to our under- 
standing primarily. Any understanding of it that we 
may be able, by God's help, to acquire, is so much to be 
thankful for. But if you cannot understand it at all, it 
can do you good. Fill your imagination with its pictures, 
and you will have an enrichment, even though your in- 
tellect cannot explain the values of your own wealth. 
God knew that men would always find much difficulty in 
understanding this book, and would be tempted to make 
that fact an excuse for not using it. See, then, what 
God caused to be written here for our admonition. This is 
the only book of Holy Scripture that contains a special 
promise of blessing to the man who reads it aloud and to 
those who hear him (i, 3). It is the only book of the 
Holy Scripture that contains a solemn warning of divine 
punishment falling on any one who ventures to change 
its mysterious pictures either by adding anything or 
by taking anything away (xxii, 18-19). It is a book that 
Almighty God cares a great deal about, whether you care 
about it or not, and He has taken pains to show you that 
He cares. The book was given to the Church evidently 
to bring comfort and encouragement to Christians suffer- 
ing a peculiar trial. In the end of the first Christian 
century Christians were few. It did not look as if the 
Church could live. The governing powers of the Roman 
Empire seemed to have made up their minds that this 

5 



movement must be crushed. Things looked as if it 
would be. Some Churches had seen their dearest and 
best taken from them by martyrdom. Any Church, any 
individual Christian, was liable to suffer such an agony at 
any time. Faith must certainly have been shaken. 
What did God mean to do? This book is a divine an- 
swer. Its title might be said to be "The Conflict of Good 
and Evil, as It Appears to Almighty God." It is called 
a " Revelation," an "Unveiling," as taking off the veil 
that hides two things, — (i) the real meaning of the 
Church's conflict in this present time, and (2) the way in 
which the conflict is coming out at last. 

It is a revelation given to S. John, the Apostle and 
Evangelist, " the disciple whom Jesus loved," while he was 
himself suffering persecution from the Roman govern- 
ment, as an exile and a slave, working in the mines of the 
little island of Patmos in the Aegean sea. It is the 
fashion in these days, even with good Christians in the 
world of scholarship, to represent S. John as not really 
having any visions or revelations at all, but just writing 
a book out of his own head, to comfort the Christians of 
his day, and casting it in this form for literary effect, 
just as John Bunyan wrote his "Pilgrim's Progress," 
and then said that he saw all this in a dream. Person- 
ally, I have no sympathy with that suggestion. I 
believe that S. John really saw and heard in visions what 
he says he saw and heard. S. Irenaeus, who wrote a 
book somewhere about eighty years after S. John's 
death, and who was a pupil of a pupil of S. John, says, 
"77 was seen quite lately in the days of Domitian." I 
make no doubt, that all these visions were really things 
seen. On the other hand, I can feel that God, giving S. 
John a series of visions, would have to make His pictures 
out of materials already familiar to S. John's mind. We 

6 



shall get help to understanding the pictures sometimes 
by saying, "S. John would have been familiar with this 
or that." But we must take that as meaning, "Such is 
the kind of picture that S. John could begin to under- 
stand," not "Such is the picture that S. John would make 
out of his own head." 

I want here to fasten upon your minds two ideas, 
which are at the bottom of all right interpretation of this 
book written in the language of signs. 

The first thing is that this book is a picture gallery, with 
eight rooms in it, and S. John, who guides you through 
the rooms, will say a few words before you enter the first 
room, and again a few words after you come out from 
the last room. 

The second thing is that the pictures in some of the 
rooms begin with the conditions of the Church in S. 
John's day, and the pictures in some of the rooms begin in 
a time that is still in the future, even to us, but the pictures 
in every room take you up to the Day of Judgment or 
to the time following the Judgment. Even in the first 
room, with the letters to the seven Churches, you find the 
repeated promise, "To him that overcometh will I give." 
That giving is a part of our Lord's action in the Judgment 
Day, and brings that Day into the pictures, even of the 
first room. 

I will add a third point, interesting, but less important 
for you to notice, that the subject of the pictures in every 
room, after the first, is suggested by something that was 
shown you in the room before. 

The Introduction, the first eight verses, gives a title for 
the book (verses 1-3) and then presents the earthly author 
giving a salutation to the suffering Church in the name of 
God. That salutation must be noted as we pass. First, 
there is a deliberate piece of bad grammar in it, "Grace 



and peace," so we ought to read, "From He that is, and 
that was, and that is coming." The meaning is that this 
is a message from God the unchangeable, who will not 
submit even His Name to the laws of earthly movements, 
and who is not only eternal ("One that is to come") but 
actually "coming," in His own time, to bring His eternity 
to bear upon this poor, disordered world. "And from the 
seven Spirits, that are before His Throne." The name of 
the Holy Spirit means "The Holy Breath." These seven 
Breaths, then, must plainly be seven breathings of the 
Breath of God. The greeting is from the Father and 
from the Holy Spirit and from the Son, and the Church is 
reminded that the Holy Breath has seven special gifts to 
give to His faithful people, even as Isaiah had prophesied 
of them (Is. xi: 2, 3), and as the prayer in our Confir- 
mation Office tells them over. "And from Jesus Christ, 
who is the Faithful Witness, and the First Begotten of the 
dead, and the Prince of the Kings of the Earth." The 
unusual order, "Father, Spirit, Son," is accounted for 
by the writer's desire to give this long description of our 
Lord, and make a climax of it. He is "the Faithful 
Witness." He cannot have deceived us in His promises 
that His Church shall not die. He is "the First Be- 
gotten of the dead." He has been persecuted and slain 
Himself, but He is simply the Leader of a long array of 
brothers and sisters of His, who shall rise into glory like 
His own. He is "the Prince of the Kings of the earth." 
Even now He has all power, and He holds our persecutors 
in the hollow of His hand. 

I. With verse 9 S. John begins to give us an account of 
his first vision, lasting to the end of Chapter 3. Our 
Lord appeared to him in glorious majesty, with the long 
white robe of a High Priest, with a great voice like the 
sound of a thundering waterfall, but with the white hair 

8 



of venerable wisdom, with a girdle of gold placed, not 
about His waist as if to prepare Him for some active work, 
but breast high, as no one would wear flowing robes if he 
had any active work to do. Our Lord was thus shown 
as all-glorious and powerful, but resting serenely, not 
discerning in the mad struggle of this world, anything 
for which He should, as we say, "turn His hand over." 
But He is not unmindful of His persecuted Church. He 
is walking in the midst of seven lamp-stands, all of 
gold, and He holds on the palm of His outstretched hand 
seven stars. The lamp-stands, He tells the seer, are the 
seven Churches, what we should call the seven Dioceses, 
of the Roman province of Asia (just as we have in New 
England seven Dioceses, which are the seven Churches of 
New England), and the seven stars are the Angels (which 
is His loving word, I am sure, for the Bishops) of the 
seven Churches. Our Lord illustrates His loving care 
for the whole Church by sending to every Diocese among 
this representative group of seven a special message. 

II. The second vision fills Chapters 4-7, and the first 
verse of Chapter 8. It is a vision of the worship of God, 
and of the course of God's providences. In it the imagery 
of the Temple at Jerusalem is taken for a starting point. 
We must remember that it is not an attempt to show 
what Heaven looks like. It is a symbolic picture, not a 
literal picture. But S. John's symbol of Heaven was 
something more or less like the Temple, only with its 
rooms open to view, and with a Throne and a blaze of 
glory where the Mercy-Seat would have been in the Most 
Holy Place. The Holy Spirit is suggested in the symbo- 
lism by seven Lamps of Fire burning before the Throne. 
A Lamb showing the marks of having passed through 
death represents our Lord making His perpetual offering 
of Himself. The twenty-four Elders, — a double 



twelve, you observe, — stand for the worship of the 
Jewish Church and the Christian Church, united into 
one. The four living creatures, the Cherubim, are so 
great a subject that I cannot even touch it now.* 

The book that no one in the universe but the slain 
Lamb can open, is plainly the story of man's redemption. 
The seven seals to be opened are forces which must 
do their work, or things which must happen, before 
that story can be laid open, all completed and ready 
for the world to see. The opening of the first seal 
shows a great Conqueror going forth to war. That is 
our Lord Himself, entering into the world through 
His Incarnation. That is a very glorious providence, 
but it has to be accompanied by providences of suffer- 
ing and sorrow. The second seal shows us the forces 
of war, for our Lord did not come to send peace on 
the earth, but a sword. The third seal exhibits the action 
of scarcity groaning in the presence of luxury. For here 
three measures of coarse barley meal, the amount that 
would support a small family for a day, are to be sold at 
the price of one day's work of one man, and yet the oil and 

* The subject of the Cherubim is nobly treated in a book less 
known than it deserves to be, Rev. Patrick Fairbairn's "Typology 
of Scripture." Briefly, it may be said that they are symbolic 
figures in the form of men crowned with the heads of "the four 
excellent creatures," — the man, the lion, the ox, and the eagle. 
They seem to serve as a prophecy in symbol that fallen man shall 
be restored to the full fellowship and perfect service of God, and 
shall then be crowned with all the best excellencies of all God's 
creation, with the brain and heart and conscience and the spiritual 
capacity of man, with the strength and majesty of the lion, with 
the patient usefulness of the ox, and with the aspiration, ambition, 
and reach of the eagle. Any symbol of perfect manhood must of 
course be eminently a symbol of the manhood of our Lord, and 
hence the association of the Cherubim symbols with the writers of 
the four-fold life of our Lord in the Gospels is most appropriate. 

10 



wine, the luxuries of the rich, are to be left uninterfered 
with. The fourth seal shows us Death gathering his 
harvest in every field, and bringing cruel agencies of 
sword and famine and pestilence and wild beasts to deepen 
tragedy. It is a sorrowful picture, but it is shown that 
these forces are part of the plan of God, and at any rate 
they lead to the opening up of the story of God's final 
success in saving His world. As each of these seals is 
opened, one of the living creatures cries aloud, "Come." 
It is not " Come and see, " as you will find it in our King 
James version. It is not an invitation to the seer to 
take a closer look. It is the cry of the groaning universe, 
of humanity waiting for its deliverance, calling for the 
Second Coming, the full and final Coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. That Coming, and the fact that in it alone 
is found the end of all the world's sins, pains, and griefs, 
is the great subject of this book. 

At verse 9 of Chapter 6 the subject changes. S. John 
is standing in the heavenly places, but the first four seals 
have given him visions of forces acting in this lower world. 
The opening of the fifth seal tells him something about 
the other world. He is here shown how God's good pro- 
vidence deals with the dead. I have noted that his vision 
of Heaven starts from a representation of the Temple. 
In the outer room of the Temple was the golden Altar of 
Incense. It is repeated here. Then the place assigned 
to the martyrs, whose tragic deaths had so sorely wounded 
the Church's heart, and shaken the Church's faith, is 
found to be " under the Altar" not in the Temple of 
God's fully manifested glory, but in a basement room 
below. Does any reader of these lines remember the 
Huguenot chapel in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral? 
There is an analogous case, — a place of worship for a 
separate company beneath the great gathering place of 

11 



the worshippers in a great Church. Perhaps we may 
think that those souls of the martyrs could see into the 
Heavenly Temple and hear its songs. Certainly their 
own prayers were presented at the Incense Altar, as we 
shall see later, and had great answering. Meanwhile, we 
are to observe three things revealed to us concerning the 
state of the blessed dead: First, they have not come to 
the fulness of glory and joy, being, indeed, not yet "in 
Heaven," in the supreme sense of that phrase, but are in 
a state of waiting. They are waiting for the resurrection 
to give them that bodily life for which our nature is 
made, and they are waiting ("How long wilt Thou not 
judge and avenge our blood?") for the setting up of God's 
final Kingdom of consummated justice and right, and of 
a perfect social order. The second point is that they are 
very actively engaged in prayer. S. Paul's phrase about 
"them that sleep in Jesus" certainly needs to be pressed 
to-day on those who dream that good people, when they 
die, go at once to final glory. But this vision, on the other 
hand, shows us that the mental action of these sleeping 
saints is very eager and constant, and is a great power. 
The third point is that the faithful dead have "white 
robes" given them during their waiting-time. "White 
robes" in this book are a symbol of holiness. The book 
itself tells us that in Chapter 19, — "The fine linen is the 
righteous acts of the saints." Then the giving of white 
robes must mean the making of righteous character. In 
fact, while we disown a certain unfortunate doctrine of 
Purgatory, we must open our eyes to a plain teaching of 
purgation in the other world, even for martyr-saints. 
Modern Christians need to be admonished severely, that 
the notion that death is a supremely powerful sacrament, 
and makes every second rate, or third rate, Christian 
into a great saint in a moment of time, is "a fond thing, 

12 



vainly invented, and . . . repugnant to the word of 
God." 

With the 1 2th verse of the sixth chapter we come to 
the opening of the sixth seal, and here the particular 
providence disclosed is that of the immediate preparations 
for the bringing in of the Day of Judgment. I cannot stop 
to attempt any interpretation of these signs of blackened 
sun and falling stars and removing heaven and shaken 
earth. Whatever they mean, they are our Lord's prom- 
ised signs that His Coming is close at hand. The 
opening of the seventh seal in verse I of Chapter 8 will 
bring us to that great end itself. Meanwhile we have in 
Chapter 7 two visions which I may call episodes. Both 
are intended to comfort the heart of the persecuted 
Church by showing how perfectly the Church will be 
taken care of and preserved through all its trials. 

In the first of these two visions the Church of the 
saved is represented as the Israel of God, organized in 
its twelve tribes. Just as the terrors of the Day of 
Judgment are coming on, the angels of God seal every 
member of God's Kingdom in his forehead to mark him 
for safety. The Church-number, 12, is repeated with 
tremendous emphasis, — twelve thousand sealed from each 
of the twelve tribes. Of course, it does not mean that 
that is the number of God's saved people, but it does mean 
that God's plan of salvation is an orderly plan, and a 
definite plan, and a plan that does not admit of one soli- 
tary failure at any point. Then the second vision shows 
us the great company of the saved, "a multitude that no 
man can number," in their gratitude and joy and praise. 
With the opening of the seventh seal comes the end, but 
there is here no description of the end as yet, only we are 
told that "there was a silence in heaven about the space 
of half an hour." "A half hour that is the beginning of 

13 



an eternal rest," says an ancient commentator. I think 
he has the right idea. S. John had been seeing a vision 
that said that even under God's own guidance and pro- 
tection the Church and the world must go through many 
distresses and conflicts to God's salvation. This half 
hour of silence is a most expressive symbol of the bring- 
ing of all such things to an utter end. As Mrs. Browning 
says in her great poem, — "He giveth His beloved sleep," 

"O earth, so full of dreary noises, 
O men with wailing in your voices, 
O strife, O curse, . . . 
God strikes a silence through you all." 

God's providences must lead us by a hard way, but 
they will surely lead us into a perfect peace. That 
"half hour," then, is not a time that ends. We go so far 
into eternity, and then while eternity goes on, we come 
back to the first Christian century once more, and begin 
all over again to follow the plans of God, looking at them 
now from a new point of view. 

III. The prayer of the martyrs in the sixth chapter 
besought God not only to make the world go right, but to 
punish the world for its wilful wrong-doing. "How long 
will Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that 
dwell on the earth?" The third room in our gallery is 
occupied with the vision of the seven trumpets, showing 
how those prayers are answered in Chapters 8, 9, 10, and 
11. First, in verses 2-5 of Chapter 8, we see an angel 
offering those prayers of God's people, with much incense 
added to them, at the golden Altar of Incense before the 
Throne. (Rid yourselves of the idea that incense is a 
symbol of prayer. It is expressly a symbol of something 
that has to be added to all human prayers, and that is the 
"sweet savour" of the merits and intercessions of our 

14 



Lord Jesus Christ. "Let my prayer be set forth in Thy 
sight as the incense," means "Let my prayer be as 
acceptable as the offering of sweet odors." It does not 
mean that my prayer is a sweet odor in itself, or that 
sweet odors are symbols of prayer. Incense stands for 
the whole Self-offering of our Lord, supremely accept- 
able, and covering, in prayers or anything else, the un- 
acceptableness of our offering.) Then the angel fills his 
censer with fire from the Altar and casts it — that is, the fire, 
the hot coals, — down upon the earth. "Let hot burning 
coals fall upon them," is the thought. Then in verses 
6-12, you are shown how wilful sin spoils all life for wilful 
sinners. Four trumpets sound one after another, and 
you see, in successive illustrations, how sin destroys the 
value of the world's good things. Agriculture, com- 
merce, refreshment, the light of wholesome knowledge, 
are taken in turn. The punishment of sin is that it wipes 
out a considerable part, — we must not stick at a literal 
"one third part," — of the value of every good gift of 
God's creation. In verse 13 an angel crying "woe" pro- 
claims that something worse is coming. Just as we had 
four seals to cover God's providences in this world's life, 
and then with the fifth seal turned to the world of spirits, 
so here four trumpets, the world-number, show us this 
law of God acting on our world which we know, and then 
we have in the first 12 verses of Chapter 9 a revelation of 
a great spiritual force, but this time a host of evil spirits, 
allowed to work havoc and distress among men. The 
star falling from heaven and receiving power to open the 
pit of the abyss and call out tormentors like a locust- 
plague is certainly Satan. I must not try to expound 
this singularly mysterious and unintelligible picture, 
more than to say that following the analogy of the fifth 
seal, I believe that the plagues of the fifth trumpet are 

15 



distresses which men who have given themselves to do 
evil rather than good are really suffering now in the 
invisible world. On the analogy of the sixth seal again, 
I feel safe in setting it down that the vision of the 
sixth trumpet refers to a tremendous climax of evil- 
doing, on the one hand, and of suffering on the other 
hand, with alas! fearful hardening of the heart of wilful 
offenders against all God's lessons of experience, which 
will characterize the closing days of this world's pro- 
bation, just before the final Judgment. The seventh 
trumpet, as will be seen plainly from Chapter n, verses 
15-19, ushers in (even as the seventh seal ushered in) the 
Judgment itself, and the final victory of right. 

But we must pause to notice here between the sixth 
and seventh trumpets, as between the sixth and seventh 
seals, two episodic visions. The first of the episodes fills 
Chapter 10. The second fills fourteen verses of Chapter 
11. To throw a little light on Chapter 10, I would re- 
mind you that in the visions of the trumpets we see God 
punishing the lost. The Church of the saved had to be 
led through a discipline of pain and trial and had to be 
assured in the episodic visions of the seal group that God 
would not fail in His great final purpose after all. Simi- 
larly, the Church sees that in this riot of permitted evil 
God's people also must suffer many things. Now come 
visions of reassurance. We have in the picture of the 
sixth trumpet evil rising to a climax, punishment rising 
to a climax, defiant hardness of impenitence rising to a 
climax, in turn. Now appears a mighty angel, with the 
rainbow of hope and promise about his head, with a face 
as the sun, and with feet like pillars of fire, and he brings, 
as you might expect, a great message bearing on this 
terrible situation. I take it to be a message concerning 
the final outcome of moral evil. That message is not 

16 



given us to know. It was uttered, with singular solem- 
nity. S. John heard it, and could have written it, or at 
least he thought he could. He was just essaying to write 
it down, when he was told, "Seal up the things which 
the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.' 1 What 
God had to say on the subject was something which the 
Church was not yet fit to hear. It was not, then, what 
the Church was already in the habit of thinking. It was 
some great corrective of the Church's habitual thought, 
which yet would have been so misunderstood and mis- 
represented that God could not allow the Church to hear 
it then. But the angel did go on to a great message of 
comfort that the Church might hear, swearing solemnly 
that this condition of permitted evil shall not go on for 
always. The seventh angel shall sound his trumpet — ■ 
God knows when, — and when God's time is come there 
shall be no more delay. And yet the Church is warned 
again that God's people must share in the agony of the 
waiting-time. The seer was given a parchment roll and 
told to eat it. It was sweet in his mouth. The revela- 
tion of God is a joy and comfort to every man who truly 
receives it. But when the seer came to digest his roll, it 
was bitter within him. So it must always be. If we lay 
God's word to heart, His message will bring us some 
bitternesses which by disloyalty we could easily escape. 

The other episode is very hard to understand, and I 
must say very much about it, or very, very little. I 
must choose the very little. Under the figure of measur- 
ing the Temple, with its two rooms, the Holy Place and 
the Holy of Holies, and leaving the outer court to be 
trampled by the profane, God promises special protection 
to His faithful people during the special horrors of the 
intensified evil of the very last days. Whatever all this 
about the two witnesses may mean, I believe it to be 

17 



something of the future and not a picture symbolizing 
any present facts. But this episode introduces a new 
figure, "the beast that cometh up out of the abyss," and 
now we are called to move on into the fourth room and to 
see a vision of the trials of the Church in conflict with that 
evil power. There have been sundry suggestions given 
to us in the room of the trumpet-visions that the forces of 
evil are under a personal leadership. Now we shall be 
occupied particularly with the development of that idea, — 
that the conflict of good and evil in the world is a conflict 
between two persons, Jesus Christ and the fallen arch- 
angel, Satan. 

IV. This new vision opens with the beginning of the 
twelfth chapter, and goes through the fourteenth. The 
woman arrayed with the sun and crowned with twelve 
stars is the Church of God. The child of which she is 
delivered is the promised Messiah, Jesus, the Son of God, 
who is caught away out of this world to God's throne. 

The mysterious passage about war in heaven seems to 
imply that when our Lord entered upon His Heavenly 
Priesthood at His Ascension into Heaven, there was some 
serious curtailment of the power of Satan and the fallen 
angels, compared with that freedom which God had given 
them aforetime, and certainly the casting down of the 
dragon to the earth suggest our Lord's words to the 
Apostles, "I beheld Satan, as lightning, fallen from 
Heaven," and also the star fallen from heaven seen at the 
blowing of the sixth trumpet in the preceding vision- 
group. The flood of waters which the dragon casts out 
of his mouth represents such social movements as (to 
name some very different ones) the persecution of the 
Church by the Roman emperors down to Diocletian, and 
then again the barbarian invasion of Europe, which 
brought on the darkness of the Dark Ages. The forces 

18 



which make for peace and good order and solidity in 
social life prevailed every time over the forces that make 
for quarrel and strife and disintegration. The earth 
swallowed up the flood. It will swallow up any flood of 
overwhelming adversaries that Satan may bring against 
the Church. He must devise a more subtle scheme. 

In Chapter 13 that scheme is unfolded. The dragon 
calls up two beasts, one out of the sea, another out of the 
earth. The sea is the symbol of the human forces in 
their natural state, the raw material of humanity. Daniel 
saw successive empires emerging from that welter of 
ungoverned waves. Doubtless, S. John felt that this 
beast out of the sea was the Roman empire of his day. 
But we must give the symbol a wider meaning. It 
stands for godless and selfish power supported by the 
undisciplined masses of mankind in any age. It may be 
an empire. It may be a mob. It is like the dragon, for 
it is the embodiment of selfishness, which is the central 
ungodliness. This beast proclaims to men that they 
must be selfish. And it is quite true that selfishness 
largely governs this world. Every one will fall under 
the power of it who is not enrolled in the book of life of 
the Lamb, who represents eternal self-sacrifice. One of 
its heads has received a deadly wound. That means that 
in our Lord's death upon the Cross selfishness has re- 
ceived its death-blow. Already our Lord has "destroyed 
him that had the power over death, that is, the devil." 
Yet the devil, along with his great ally and instrument, 
human selfishness, has revived, and goes on his course as 
if nothing had happened. And here is a solemn warning 
in verses 9-10: "Listen well to this. If any man is for 
captivity, into captivity he goeth." That is, if a man is 
destined to hardship (in God's high plan) he will come to 
hardship. Bowing down to selfishness will not save him 

19 



from God's ordering of his life. And if a man fights with 
the weapons of selfishness, slaying with the sword of 
human meanness, by that sword he will sooner or later 
be pierced through. He may have an outward success. 
He will be in reality a soured, disappointed man. " Here 
is the steadfastness and faith of the saints." 

The second beast comes out of the earth (verse n). 
The earth stands for the human forces organized, dis- 
ciplined, made productive, clothed with beauty. It is 
human nature subjected to civilization, education, cul- 
ture. Culture looks very much like salvation. A god- 
less, selfish culture will look very much like the Lamb of 
God, but it will have the horns of the dragon, and the 
character of the dragon, and it will do the dragon's work. 
Later in this book it is called the false prophet. In S. 
John's day it was partly the heathen priesthood, and 
partly the philosophy of the schools, not guided by the 
revelation of the faith of Jesus. To-day it is the force 
which professes to teach men what is right, and what 
makes for progress, and teaches them falsely. It is 
godless and selfish culture and education. It is a false 
public opinion. The first beast proclaimed selfishness 
as necessary. The second beast teaches that selfishness 
is a duty. This selfish wisdom works the miracles of 
modern science, invention, discovery, and in the power 
of them demands that all men shall follow its teaching 
as certain truth. To sum up this whole vision of the 
second beast, it means a godless culture, teaching men 
that the world's true salvation lies in a refined and edu- 
cated selfishness, i. e., in the worship of all that the first 
beast more crudely represents. "The number of the 
beast," mentioned in verse 18, must be, I think, the 
number of the name of some person who will appear in 
the last days as a leader of ungodliness, in fact, the con- 

20 



summate Anti-Christ. It will be observed that his num- 
ber, 666, is a curious parody of the number of the name 
of Jesus, which is 888. It is quite remarkable, by the 
way, how much this book is a book of the conflict of 
Divine powers and the parodies of Divine powers. I 
cannot pursue this subject here. 

In Chapter 14 we come again to the time of the end, 
and see the Lamb victorious over His foes, rejoicing in 
the midst of His saved people. I must pass very lightly 
over this chapter, only noting that in verse 8 we hear of 
the fall of the persecuting city Babylon, which introduces 
a new subject to be taken up by and by, that is, in our 
sixth room, and again that in verses 14-20 we have the 
consummation of good and evil forces represented as a 
harvest to be reaped and a vintage to be trodden, respectively. 
(I cannot help remarking as I pass, that there is a sug- 
gestiveness in the fact that even the punishment of the 
evil is here represented not as an annihilation, nor as a 
casting out as waste material, but as an act which pro- 
duces transformation into a rich result in God's good 
time. Perhaps I misread the picture. But I cannot read 
it in any other way with my present mind.) I add that 
this chapter contains a vision of the last things, but it 
seems to me that verse 13 is to be taken as a sort of 
parenthesis. The seer has a vision of the final blessed- 
ness of God's people and then a voice from Heaven tells 
him to write down this as a present lesson from that 
revelation of joy and triumph, "Blessed are the dead 
who die in the Lord, from this time all through the ages, 
for they are on their way to this great end at last." 

V. I must pass lightly over Chapters 15 and 16 also, 
in which we pass through the fifth room of our gallery of 
visions. It takes up the lesson of the trumpet-visions, 
that sin brings pain and punishment even in this world, 

21 



and shows that that law of God will in the last days have 
its climax also, along with the ripening of good powers and 
evil powers for the final conflict. We must notice that 
it is a vision of seven bowls, not vials. "Vials of wrath " 
have become proverbial in our English speech, but that 
was a blundering translation by our fathers of three hun- 
dred years ago. The Greek word 4>ia\r) means a shallow 
bowl. It has given us in English a word for a small, 
narrow-necked bottle. This vision, I repeat is meant to 
give you a picture of seven bowls. As with the seals and 
with the trumpets, the first four deal with things of this 
world, and the fifth touches the world of spirits, and in 
this case (as with the fifth trumpet) the realm of the evil 
spirits, and then the sixth ushers in the immediate prep- 
aration for the final Judgment, and the seventh the 
Judgment itself. This series of pictures belongs wholly to 
a time still future. 

VI. But now we have heard repeated mention of 
great Babylon, a harlot city, at once a persecutor and a 
corrupter. In the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters 
of our book, and in ten verses of Chapter 19, we have the 
pictures of the sixth room, setting forth the character 
and career of this woman who is a city. What now is 
this Babylon? We are told expressly in this book, com- 
paring verse 9 and verse 18 of Chapter 17, that this woman 
is a great city that sits on seven hills, and is in fact 
"that great city which reigneth over the kings of the 
earth." In S. John's day, then, this Babylon was cer- 
tainly the city of Rome. Yet there are features about 
this harlot that suggest a fallen Church. The figure of 
the harlot is specially used in the Old ' Testament of a 
Church not faithful to her covenant with God. More- 
over, in the parodies of this book this harlot is certainly 
set over against that holy Church which is also called 

22 



by the name of a city, new Jerusalem, the Bride, the 
Lamb's wife. And strangely, too, she appears in the 
wilderness, just where the Church was seen to take refuge 
in Chapter 12. Many Protestant commentators have 
found an easy way out of this difficulty. "Babylon," 
they say, "is Rome, first Pagan, then Papal, but always 
corrupting to her own associates and always persecuting 
toward the true followers of God." That explanation is 
too easy, and very much too shallow. Protestant 
Churches are just as liable to fall into the sin of unfaith- 
fulness to God's covenant as Roman Churches. We 
must look a little deeper for the real purpose of God in 
this fearful symbol. What makes a city a great power 
for good or evil? It is the fact that a city is a repre- 
sentative of the social order, good or bad, in a con- 
centrated form. The social order finds its chief embodi- 
ment in great cities. In S. John's day great Rome set 
the fashion for the social order of the whole civilized 
world. If Rome was self-indulgent and careless of God, 
the whole social order was self-indulgent and godless in 
every corner of the empire. But the social order of the 
world started with a covenant between God and primeval 
man. When the social order forgets and neglects God, 
that neglect is a breach of an ancient bond. It is a 
harlotry. We must remember that Tyre is described by 
the Old Testament prophets as a harlot, as well as Jeru- 
salem and Samaria. The world is bound in an ancient 
covenant with God, as well as the Church. First and 
foremost, then, this great Babylon is any godless social 
order, especially as it is concentrated in great cities, like 
London, Paris, Berlin, or New York, to-day. And the 
same harlotry is found in the social order everywhere. 
No town so small that it does not show the same crimi- 
nality on its little scale. But on the other hand, there 

23 



is a social order that is bound to God by more special ties. 
If anywhere, in any of its membership, the Church of 
God is unfaithful to God, and neglectful of Him, and 
grows selfish and self-indulgent, and puts unnecessary 
difficulties in the way of any of God's servants, oppress- 
ing them, refusing them sympathy, hating them when God 
loves them, then such a failure of such a social order is a 
far more awful harlotry than even that of the world. 
Wherever there is a church quarrel, there is the spirit of 
this harlot, on both sides of the quarrel. If Protestants and 
Roman Catholics hate one another, there is something of 
the harlot in them both. If any part of the Church uses 
persecution to coerce conscience, there is harlotry. If 
any part of the Church becomes selfishly luxurious, 
there is harlotry. It is quite true to say that this woman 
enthroned on the wild beast of human selfishness is 
partly the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, or (as perhaps 
I should rather say) the Church of Christ is partly this 
harlot. 

In verses 7-18 of Chapter 17 an angel gives the seer 
some explanation of this vision. "The beast [which 
carries the woman] was, and is not," he says, "and is 
about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdi- 
tion." That is, selfishness reigned over the world, un- 
checked, but in our Lord's earthly life and death received 
a death-blow. In a sense, it was even then destroyed. 
As a world -sovereign it "is not." Yet it comes up and 
fights for its life, and will go on till the final victory of 
God annihilates it forever. The particular form which 
a godless social order took on in S. John's day, being that 
of the Roman empire, summed up in its capital city, we 
are told that the seven heads of the beast on which the 
woman sits may be taken as suggesting seven hills on 
which that city is built, and again those seven heads 

24 



may stand for seven kings, which seems to mean a 
succession of imperial governments that have dominated 
in their turn the whole civilization of their day. These 
will be (i) Egypt, (2) Assyria, (3) Babylonia, (4) Persia, 
(5) the kingdom of Alexander and his successors (these 
five are fallen), (6) Rome, which "now is" (in S. John's 
day), and (7) one which is not yet come. The seventh 
head bears ten horns which are declared to be ten kings. 
This may be taken to imply just what history has un- 
rolled before us, that there would be no seventh world 
empire, but (instead of that) a congeries of national 
governments. Or it is possible to find in the institution 
of the papacy a seventh world empire of a sort, so making 
that the seventh head, associated with a dispersal of 
secular government into a group of nationalities. It is 
simply a question whether we are to take the seventh 
head with its ten horns as a seventh world empire asso- 
ciated with a group of national governments, or as a 
suggestion that instead of a world empire will spring up a 
group of national movements. Either interpretation is 
true to the facts of history. The beast himself is said to 
be an eighth head and of the seven. That he "is of the 
seven" means that the beast of godless selfishness lends 
his character to the governments of men, which is sadly 
true. That he is an eighth head would seem to hint that 
just in the last climax of evil all forms of government will 
disappear for a time, and selfishness will tyranize over 
men in a condition of anarchy. And this corresponds to 
the strange-seeming statement that the ten kings and 
the beast will turn upon the harlot and make her desolate 
and naked and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. If 
the harlot represents a godless social order, how can the 
governing powers of the world be represented as hating 
and destroying her? The solemn answer is that that is 

25 






just what anarchists are already offering as a gospel. The 
present social experiment, they say, is an utter failure. 
Society as we know it, must be destroyed, to give humanity 
a chance to live its true life. 

The eighteenth chapter, showing the utter destruction 
of Babylon, I must pass over without a word, except to 
say that in days when the existing social order was act- 
ively and cruelly persecuting the Church, this long 
chapter of exultation over great Babylon's fall must have 
carried a thrilling interest to Christians, which it is hard 
for us who do not feel much troubled by Babylon, to 
realize. And we need to remember, too, that though 
Babylon is destroyed by powers as evil as herself, yet her 
destruction opens the way for the coming of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, to take to Him His great power and reign, 
even as is set forth to us in the first ten verses of Chapter 
19. The mention of this great culminating triumph of 
spiritual power, the triumph of all the things that the 
number seven symbolizes, over all the things that the 
number six symbolizes, leads us then most naturally out 
of the sixth room of our gallery into the seventh. 

VII. The pictures of the seventh room begin with 
verse 11 of Chapter 19, and go on through Chapters 19 
and 20, and eight verses of Chapter 21. Again I cannot 
say anything about detail. Our Lord is represented as 
going forth a conqueror at the head of the armies of 
Heaven and as accomplishing a great victory over the 
powers of evil. That takes us through the nineteenth 
chapter. Then comes an episode, in the first six verses 
of the twentieth chapter, which involves one of the most 
fiercely disputed points in this book. In the first three 
verses we see Satan seized and bound, and cast into a pit, 
and sealed up for a thousand years, that for all that time 
he may deceive the nations no more. In the next three 

26 



verses we see a resurrection of the martyrs and saints, in 
fact, of all God's people who have not worshipped the 
beast, nor allowed his mark to be impressed upon them. 
But "the rest of the dead lived not again until the thou- 
sand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. 
Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resur- 
rection; on such the second death hath no power, but 
they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign 
with him a thousand years." On what I shall call the 
natural view of this passage, it foretells that when our 
Lord comes to judgment, He will first suppress all evil, 
and raise His faithful people from death and set up a 
reign of blessedness here on earth, which will last for a 
time here described as a thousand years, which is not 
likely to be a literal measure of time, and then when that 
period is over, the powers of evil, which had before been 
held in check, but not destroyed, will be allowed to rise 
up in one last fearful rebellion, which will be followed by 
their utter and final overthrow (verses 7-10), by the 
general resurrection and judgment (verses 11-15), an d by 
the coming down of the new Jerusalem from Heaven into 
the earth; in other words, by the setting up of a perfect 
social order of holiness and happiness on earth, set forth 
in verses 1-8 of Chapter 21, and then more fully in 
the pictures of the eighth room (21, 9 to 22, 5, inclusive). 
There is a rival interpretation of the episode in the 
first six verses of Chapter 20, which makes it to refer to 
the present dispensation. This is the "thousand years." 
Satan was bound at our Lord's First Advent. The first 
resurrection is the resurrection of saved souls quickened 
to spiritual life in Christ. It is not a resurrection of 
those who had not worshipped the beast, but of those in 
every age who are not going to give way before the powers 
of evil. They reign for a thousand years in the sense that 

27 



during a space described as a thousand years some or 
other of them will always be found reigning. I must say 
that that seems to me to be a severely strained interpre- 
tation. But it is that of the great majority of modern 
interpreters. It was not the interpretation of the first 
two Christian centuries, but from the third century on, 
the majority of students have been ashamed to believe in 
a millennial reign of our Lord with His saints between 
the resurrection of the Church and the resurrection of the 
world. Yet I notice that S. Paul was earnestly desirous 
that he might attain (as he told the Philippians) "unto 
the resurrection from the dead." Now S. Paul had had 
a resurrection to spiritual life. To the resurrection of 
the dead in general he could not help coming, whether 
he wanted to or not. But evidently he had learned to 
look for a. first resurrection, a resurrection jrom the dead, 
a resurrection of some particular deceased persons from 
among the dead in general. I cannot but understand 
the twentieth chapter of the Revelation to say the same. 
VIII. The mention of the new Jerusalem coming down 
out of Heaven, in the first verses of Chapter 21 leads 
(after the manner of this book) to another group of 
pictures in an eighth room of our gallery, setting forth 
the glory of that holy city, that new order of covenanted 
social life, which is also figured as the Bride of the Lamb. 
I cannot take time to explain any feature of it, nor to 
comment on the farewell words of the seer, from verses 6 
of Chapter 22 to the end. Only I will direct your atten- 
tion to one point which is most commonly sadly missed. 
In verse 17 of Chapter 22 we find these words, "The 
Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And he that heareth, 
let him say, Come." That repeated "Come" is a prayer 
for the second coming of our Lord, His coming to put an 
end to sin and sorrow. That is the central idea of this 

28 



book. The Spirit and the Bride are praying for that 
coming perpetually. Let him that heareth join with 
them to swell that tide of prayer. This is no urgent cal- 
ling upon sinners to come to Christ. It is calling on 
Him to come and finish His work. In the meantime, 
while we are waiting wearily for that promised hour, let 
us all have recourse to Him, the invisible Head. "And 
he that is athirst, let him come" to that gracious Lord of 
Life; "he that will, let him take of the water of life 
freely." 



29 



ANALYSIS OF THE BOOK OF 
THE REVELATION 



IT is a book of symbols, and to begin with, its very 
structure is founded upon a use of numbers as hav- 
ing a symbolic meaning. 

In a religious use, to those who have received the revelation 
of God as Triune, 

3 is the number that most naturally suggests God. 

Then to one who considers how human beings look four 
ways, forward and back, and right and left, and how human 
instinct speaks of "the four quarters of the earth," and "the 
four winds of heaven," entirely regarding this world as a four- 
way place, 

4 is the number of the world of men. 

In Old Testament times men could see no reason why 3 
should be a number standing for the idea of God particularly, 
but even in Old Testament times God stamped the two follow- 
ing combinations of 3 and 4 as somehow markedly sacred 
numbers. 

7 ( = 3+4) is a natural symbol for the idea of God 
wrought into union with the world, God acting upon 
the world. 

A week of seven days is not at all a natural division of time. 
We may well imagine it to be a revealed division of time. At 
any rate it came about providentially, and associated the num- 
ber 7 with religious ideas. See Ex. xxv: 31, 37, Zech. iii: 9, and 
Rev. iv: 5, for passages suggesting that the operations of the 
Holy Spirit are somehow 7-fold. Note that sometimes the 
number is used of an action of God upon the world, not as 
Sanctifier, but simply as providential Orderer of events, as in 
Gen. xli: 25, 26, 27, Rev. xvii: 9. 

30 



12 ( = 3X4)> where the 3 and 4 are not simply added 
together, but actually multiplied into one another, is 
naturally the symbol of the Church relation, the 
organic union of God and His people. 

The number 7 may represent God acting on men from with- 
out, but 12 must stand for God acting on men and through men, 
as one who dwells in them and walks in them. Hence comes 
the providential ordering which divides Israel into 12 tribes, 
and that so carefully, that when Levi is taken out from the list, 
Joseph is divided into two, Ephraim and Manasseh. [What 
tribe is omitted in Rev. vii: 5-8, in order to keep the sacred 12? 
Compare Acts i: 21, 22, where it is urged that the number of 
the original apostles must be made 12 again, though in fact 
many apostles were to be added later, as S. Paul, S. Barnabas, 
S. Silas, S. Timothy.] 

For use of 12 in this book see vii: 5-8, xii:2, xxi: 12-21. 

Depending on the significance of 7 as the number of 
the Sanctifier, and on the number of the week as a 
sacred season, we have two other symbolic numbers, 
6 and 8. 

6 is the number next short of seven, and so repre- 
sents the world coming short of the intended result of 
the Divine action by which God adds Himself to His 
creature. 

It is the number of the world without God, of man unsaved, 
of worldliness, of selfishness. 

[Note the providential fact, providentially recorded in 2 
Chron. ix: 13, that King Solomon's annual income from tribu- 
taries was 666 talents of gold, and compare the statement in this 
book, xiii: 18, that somehow 666 is "the number" of the great 
anti-Christian power.] 

8 is the number of new beginning, because in our reck- 
oning of time by weeks, every new first day is an 8th 
day, or conversely every 8th-day is a new first day. 

31 



So 8 comes to be the number of fresh life, of resurrection, of 
regeneration. It seems not accidental, but providential, that 
we read of "eight souls" saved in the Ark for the beginning of a 
new dispensation in a new world, and that the Lord Jesus Christ, 
having suffered the godless world to prevail against Him and 
put Him to death on the 6th day of the last week of His life, 
should then have risen from death on the 8th (or new 1st) day, 
to make a new beginning of life and salvation. 

666 is said to be "the number of the beast" in xiii: 18. 

888 is the number of the Name Jesus. This again seems 
rather providential than accidental. 

[Note that in Hebrew and Greek every letter of the alphabet is 
also a number. Hence every proper name (and indeed every 
word) in either of those languages has its " number" made up by 
adding together the numerical value of all its letters. Thus the 
name Adam in Greek has a numerical value, 1+4+1+40 = 46.] 

That the Structure of the Book of Revelation is really 
based upon such a scheme of number-symbolism will 
appear from the following facts : 

1. Between a brief introduction and a brief close it is made 
up of Eight Visions, Seven Visions of the conflict of Good and 
Evil in the world, that is, of the working out of the Covenant 
Scheme of Salvation, followed by an Eighth Vision of the New 
Life, which is to follow. 

2. Again, the first Seven Visions are divided into two 
groups, of Four and Three. , 

(a) The first Four Visions (note the world-number, 4) 
are occupied with conditions of conflict which fill the whole 
history of the Christian Dispensation. They show in a 
general way how the world receives what God sends. 

(b) The next Three Visions (note the God-number, 3) 
are occupied with conditions belonging to the last days only. 
[See xv: 1, — "seven plagues which are the last," R. V.l 
They show what God will do when His time is come to put 
forth His Almightiness and bring in the great end without 
waiting any longer upon the slow response of men. 

32 



3. Beside the fact (already mentioned) that the Eighth 
Vision is a Vision of the New Life of the New World, it is to be 
noted that even among the Seven the Sixth Vision is a Vision 
of the Church corrupted by an alliance with worldly powers, 
and the Seventh Vision is a vision of the final Triumph of God's 
Saving Purpose, that is, of the union of the 3 and 4 made ef- 
fective at last. 

4. Finally it is to be noted that several of the visions are 
themselves divided into seven, and in each of these cases there 
is a marked subdivision of the 7 into groups of 3+4 or 4+3. 
Thus the messages to the 7 churches are marked off into a 
group of 4 and a group of 3 by the different positions of the 
saying, "He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith 
unto the churches." In the Vision of the 7 Seals, the first 4 
seals introduce conditions of this world, and the last 3 things of 
the other world or of coming judgment. Similarly, in the 
vision of the 7 Trumpets, the proclamation, "Woe, woe, woe," 
separates the first 4 from the last 3. Again in the Vision of the 7 
Bowls ("Vials" in the King James Version), the use of the 
prepositions "into" and "upon" (properly distinguished in the 
Revised Version) divides the first 3 from the last 4. 

It should be added that one of the marked features of 
this Revelation is the exhibition of the Powers of Evil 
as constituting a sort of parody of the Powers of Good. 
Thus we have set out against the Trinity of the God- 
head a Trinity of Evil, the Dragon, the First Beast, and 
the Second Beast, against the Lamb (to apviov) is set 
the Beast (to drjpiov), and to secure this precise 
contrast and comparison a different word is used for 
Lamb from that of S. John's Gospel (6 cljjlvos). 
Against the Bride (17 vbiufrrj) is set the Harlot (rj iropvr)), 
and as the Bride, the Holy Church, is seen fleeing for 
refuge into the wilderness, so it is from the wilderness 
that the Harlot, the corrupted Church, comes forth to 
rule the nations. 

So also two cities are held up in contrast, the holy city, 
New Jerusalem, as yet invisible, but which is to last 

33 



for ever, and that other City, Babylon, which makes 
itself felt as a present, overwhelming power, but is 
doomed to an irreparable destruction. And the 
"throne" of Satan is set against the "throne" of God 
in three references (ii. 13, xiii. 2, xvi. 10), in all which 
the King James Version unfortunately gave "seat" 
instead of "throne" from a miscalculated reverence, 
obscuring the warning which God meant to give His 
people as to the seriousness of the present power of 
evil in the world. 

The Following is the Analysis in Detail: 
Introduction, giving Title and Authorship i:i-8. 

I. A Vision of the Glorified Christ, who shows 

Himself as one having a constant care over 
His Church, and sends messages to 7 Churches 
( = Dioceses) in the Roman Province of 
Asia i: 9 — iii: end. 

II. A Vision of the Glory of God, the Blessed 
Trinity, in Heaven, showing also a Book with 

7 Seals, implying that the story of man's 
redemption cannot be read and understood 
till the Church has passed through 7 experi- 
ences of trial here indicated iv: i-viii: I. 

III. A Vision of 7 Trumpets, showing how 
God really answers the prayers of good men 

for the punishment of sin viii: 2 — xi: end. 

IV. A Vision of the Age-long Conflict of the 
Church with Satan and with two great Evil 
Powers that Satan raises up xii: i-xiv: end. 

V. A Vision of 7 Bowls, showing how the con- 
sequences of sin will be made more and more 
intolerable in the last times xv: 1 — xvi: end. 

34 



VI. A Vision showing what the Church cor- 
rupted by the world will come to in the last 
days, both in sin and in penalty xvii: I — xix: 10. 

VII. A Vision of the Coming of our Lord to 
Judgment, including the story of a reign of 
blessedness followed by one final breaking 
forth of evil, and then a sudden and final 
triumph of good xix: II — xxi: 8. 

VIII. A Vision of a New World and a New 

Life xxi: 9 — xxii: 9. 

Conclusion, with warning of the seriousness of 
this message, and prayer for speedy consumma- 
tion of this hope xxii: 10-end. 

To beginners in the study of the Revelation, looking 
for a short and inexpensive Commentary, the volume, 
" The Revelation" by Bp. W. Boyd Carpenter, from the 
11 Commentary for Schools" published by Cassell and 
Co., may be recommended somewhat particularly. The 
book is a i2mo., and the English price is three shillings. 



35 



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